Feudal Japan. A
retainer rides home when he spots a four-tailed fox. He shoots arrows at it to scare it away, but
the fox only grows angry. Swiftly, it
grabs a torch and races toward his home.
The fox transforms into a woman and burns his house to the ground before
transforming once more and vanishing.
The lesson of this tale is that some creatures exact vengeance quickly
and are best left alone.

Foot HQ, the present.
Kitsune plunges her knife into Splinter’s chest, however, his kevlar vest
protects him. Undaunted, Kitsune uses
her powers to seize the minds of Raphael and Michelangelo and sics them on
Splinter and Leonardo. Her powers are
useless against Splinter, who is too strong for her, and Leo is able to
overcome her mind-control as he’s had experience with it. Meanwhile, Jennika faces down Alopex but is
soon overpowered.

Downstairs in the Foot archives, April is researching the scroll
when she’s approached by Aka. Aka tells
her that she needs to help her friends and, giving her a feather, makes April
promise to memorize something.

Back upstairs, Splinter takes down Mikey and Raph with
nerve pinches. A portal opens up and
Donatello arrives, but Kitsune immediately brainwashes him and sends him to
fight Splinter. As for Jennika, Leonardo intervenes
before Alopex can kill her and Alopex has a brief moment of lucidity before
attacking Leo again. Leo defeats her,
and likewise Splinter defeats Donnie.

Kitsune is not intimidated, at least until April arrives
with the feather and recites a magic spell.
Kistune recognizes the feather as belonging to her sibling and is frightened
once she realizes that the spell has negated her mind control. Kitsune transforms into a fox and flees. As she does, Aka watches from the shadows. The Rat King approaches her and chides his sister for
abandoning her neutral status.

Soon, the Turtles recover from their fight and April
promises to tell them everything she knows about the Pantheon and the war they’re
waging. Jennika interrupts with the bad
news that Alopex has gone missing.

On the roof, Kitsune boards the helicopter she ordered
her mind controlled Foot Soldiers to prepare for her. She discovers that Aka’s spell has worn off
and she’s able to keep the Foot Soldiers under her command. As they escape, Kitsune gloats that she got
exactly what she wanted: The head of her beloved. She opens the chest and is dismayed to find
that it contains only the Shredder’s helmet.

Back in Foot HQ, Splinter holds the skull of Oroku Saki,
having outplayed Kitsune at her own game.

*This issue featured a dedication to famed comics artist
Darwyn Cooke, who passed away on May 14, 2016.

Review:

A strong finish to a pretty good two-parter. I kinda feel like we got a couple answers,
even if they weren’t preached outloud to us.
I’d wondered if Kitsune actually loved Shredder in any capacity, or if
she was just using him as a pawn in her game.
The fact that she refers to him as “beloved” even in private and seeks
to be reunited with him seems to illustrate that she retains some affections
for him.

So even a godlike creature such as her is capable of emotional indulgences. And I like
that. It gives a little bit of humanity
to the character of Kitsune, who has sort of just been a two-dimensional
villainess thus far in the series. I
guess you could say the Shredder is her weakness. After all, she was willing to spend several
centuries soaking in a tub of ooze, feigning to need it in order to be
resurrected, when she was immortal all along.
That takes some devotion.

While I didn’t care much for the Casey & April
miniseries, it did establish a little bit more about the Pantheon. At the very least, it introduced Aka and I’d
been wondering when she was going to show up in the pages of the ongoing. Her presence here brought April into a more proactive role
in the series (April had been cooling her heels in the title for a while), so
that’s another plus. April’s incantation
was pretty cheesy stuff, but perfectly alright for this comic and Ninja Turtles
in general. So long as the poetry rhymes
and has meter, I can’t hate it. Free
verse is bullshit.

Jennika is still… I dunno. She’s fairly new to the club and all, but I
can’t see what the endgame with her is.
She’s a young Foot Assassin who wants to prove herself to the Clan, but
is that all? She hasn’t received much of
a personality yet, or even back story to define her motivations. But hey, maybe she’ll surprise me. We’re pretty early in her career.

Alopex is off the game board again. We’ve sort of done this “is she a friend or
is she a foe” thing twice before; hopefully this third go around isn’t
stretched for too long. Alopex was
actually in a cool little niche as part of Harold and Nobody’s team, I really
don’t want to see that dynamic broken up before it could bear fruit.

Anyway, this was a nice little two-parter. I don’t know if it truly progressed the
Pantheon stuff all that much, but it at least caught the cast up with what the
reader already knows. We’ve known for
eons about the Rat King and we’ve known about Alopex’s sleeper agent status for
just as long; finally the characters in the book are up to speed with us. Perhaps now we can see some real forward momentum.

If I have anything else to say about this issue, aside
from complimenting Dave Wachter’s excellent art, it’s that the narrative sticks
to one location for the duration. It’s
all within the confines of Foot HQ. So
we don’t have that jerking around from thread to thread to thread thing that’s
been a bit of a problem with the series, lately. As a result, it’s very focused and a big
moment in the series is given time to have impact; Waltz lets it breathe
instead of flipping channels to see what else is on.

3 comments:

Great review. I am happy that Splinter is not dead or in a coma because it would have hit on some old cliches. I loved that Splinter also anticipated what Kitsune was after and tricked her.

However, since Kitsune is adamant about getting the Shredder's skull then there must be a way to bring him back. That is not a problem since I feel Shredder is one of those iconic villains in comic book history, but I do want to see other villains have their proper time in the light before he comes back.

In an unrelated story, there is a rumor that Batman and the Turtles will be making another team up. However, the style will resemble that of the animated series.